Court Upgrade To Bring E-Payments & Filings

The 2nd Circuit Court in South Dakota is now the third one to be upgraded to a new state-wide filing system that'll bring court services straight to your computer.

But the massive transfer from the old system is taking a little longer than expected.

Inside the Minnehaha County Courthouse, big changes are taking place that will soon allow people to skip the 2nd Circuit Court and go online instead.

A conversion from the aging Legacy filing system to Odyssey will soon bring court services to your computer, including e-payments and e-filing.

"With the Legacy system we were held. We were not able to bring these features or move into, as easily said, into the 21st century and this allows us to do that," Unified Judicial System information technology director Kent Grode said.

But converting all the civil, criminal, supervision and financial records isn't easy.

In fact, it's taking longer than Grode anticipated, at least three hours longer so far. The massive conversion has been going on non-stop since Thursday night.

Grode thought it would take 48 hours to convert 25 years worth of records onto the new system. He says they're not surprised it is taking a little longer than expected.

"When you're moving everything over, it's a lot of sit and wait process," Grode said. "We've done it before. It just takes that long to move that much data from this spot over to this spot."

But when the entire system is finally converted, Grode says you can expect the new features to go online next summer.

The 3rd Circuit covering Madison and Brookings and 5th Circuit covering Redfield and Sisseton have already undergone the upgrade.

Up next will be the 1st circuit in Yankton and the 6th in central South Dakota in March.